As opposed to the dominant headlines of the most recent government shutdown, this edition of the Schumer Shutdown hasn’t been noticeable — unless you’ve needed to use an airport in the last week or so.

Over the weekend, reports emerged of long lines at Transportation Security Administration checkpoints at airports in Houston and New Orleans — vital international gateways where TSA employees are working for free because their portion of the Department of Homeland Security has no current funding. The shutdown stems from a Democrat dispute over Border Patrol and ICE policies; ironically, those agencies are fully funded thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act from last summer.

While the Associated Press story detailing the shutdown traced the good fortune of a family who could take advantage of a cancellation to return home by weekend’s end, the AP devoted just one sentence to the cause: “Travelers complained of long waits Sunday — lasting hours in some cases — at security checkpoints at airports in Houston and New Orleans, which officials blamed on a government shutdown of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.” The part it left out: Democrats placed DHS funding on ice (pun intended) because they would rather make immigration enforcement as difficult as possible.

Regardless of the pain imposed, Democrats are digging in their heels. “Party leaders are amplifying their demands for tougher rules governing agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP),” posits Mike Lillis of The Hill. “Rank-and-file Democrats appear to be fully on board. And a test vote in the House on Thursday demonstrated that, if anything, the Iran conflict has only solidified the party’s support behind the leadership position.”

This despite the shooting in Texas that left two people dead plus the assailant (who was wearing a “Property of Allah” sweatshirt over a shirt bearing the image of an Iranian flag) as well as the attack on New York City’s Gracie Mansion where two suspects allegedly hurled an IED into a crowd — fortunately, the device did not explode.

As David Strom of Hot Air opined regarding the New York attack, “You can’t make this up. The Democrats and the media appear to be coordinating with each other to ensure that some terrorist or another will succeed in killing Americans, so they can blame it on Trump. I know that sounds nuts, but how can you explain the fact that the Democrats are, in the midst of a war with a radical Islamic regime that has told everybody that they have terrorist cells planted throughout the West, hobbling the Department of Homeland Security?”

Setting aside the overall criticism of how former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem handled herself and the bureau’s business, and the question of how her designated successor, Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, will handle the task, there is also the question of whether the Department of Homeland Security is up to the job. It’s an agency that National Review’s Andrew McCarthy nicknames the “Island of Misfit Toys” because it was patched together in the wake of 9/11 as a “‘we have to do something’ sort of agency.”

“After nearly a quarter of a century, it’s probably too late to put this genie back in the bottle,” he conceded. “And it’s not like we don’t need many of the missions that DHS now oversees. The question is whether we need DHS, specifically, overseeing them.” McCarthy goes on to specifically explain further about immigration enforcement and the Coast Guard’s list of functions, as examples. Yet while McCarthy laments the entire idea, he also concedes that if it had to stay, “I’d have it specialize in border security and immigration enforcement, while paring down its enforcement and counterterrorism operations and eliminating its duplicative, oft-politicized intelligence function.”

That’s a reform President Donald Trump (or perhaps a future President JD Vance, Marco Rubio, or name your Republican) could try to tackle down the road, but as for the here and now, it appears Democrats are leaving us vulnerable in an attempt to score political points. But as Lillis argues, “Democrats have dismissed those partisan alarms, betting that voter concerns about Trump’s militant approach to immigration enforcement will outweigh any blame they receive for refusing to fund DHS without tougher rules for immigration officers.”

“Our view is simple: abandon your my-way-or-the-highway approach,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. “You’re not intimidating anybody.”

Perhaps melting some phone lines of congressional Democrats could be a start for intimidation. Sadly for my little adopted home state of Delaware, I have three who really need to hear from me. And keep in mind: while some money is available to FEMA, continued severe weather, as we saw in Oklahoma and Michigan over the weekend, will drain their resources as the shutdown continues.